


The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes

by damalur



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John Watson is much beleaguered. Post-reunion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock quotes himself quoting Alexander Pope. Probably I should apologize in advance for this? Because what this fandom doesn't need is one more result of a fan ~~eating~~ writing her feelings. Inspired by Martin Freeman's face.
> 
> Edited by **odylism** and **cupcakeofchaos** , who did stellar jobs corralling my mistakes. Thanks to you both! ♥ Any remaining atrocities are my sole property.

Sometime in the last year, John had let his hair grow out. Not past his ears, of course, but he'd lost the compulsion to crop it to military standards; some months it even approached shaggy. Sherlock had taken a contrary track, and cut his so severely it no longer even hinted at a heavy curl. When he'd first turned up in Baker Street John hadn't recognized him, although that might have been for reasons other than his hair.

It was this among a thousand other details that made resuming life with Sherlock as difficult and painful as breathing coal dust; where once the edges of their lives had smoothed and yielded and jostled together companionably, there were silences, and too many of them. Things John didn't talk about, things Sherlock wouldn't. John refused to regret the miracle of Sherlock's resurrection, but—

But it wasn't really that, was it? It wasn't a miracle at all—not magic, but illusion. So John went to work and did the shopping and thought about updating his blog for the first time in three years, while Sherlock did...whatever it was Sherlock did. He sawed at his violin, sometimes; John heard him, late at night, but he always stopped when he heard John's tread on the stairs.

John did the shopping on Thursdays. One particular Thursday, three weeks after Sherlock's return, as he was stowing the milk in the fridge, he noticed that what part of the kitchen table wasn't taken up by Sherlock's restored lab equipment was covered in sheets and sheets of mathematical proofs.

John didn't understand any of it—the content, at least. He'd done three years of math at uni, but this was far beyond his ability, although not, he was beginning to suspect, beyond Sherlock's. He started to shuffle the papers into an orderly stack out of habit when a slender book half-hidden in the mess caught his eye; he picked it up, turned it over, and nearly dropped it again.

 _The Dynamics of an Asteroid_ , the book was titled in gold leaf. Underneath, in smaller letters, the cover added: _By James Moriarty_.

"Oh," John said, and then, "You _wanker_." Sherlock wasn't there to hear him. Shame.

He left the book in plain view. Over the next week he accidentally (more or less) spilled tea on it twice, but Sherlock didn't appear to notice.

At the one month mark, Sherlock invited him along on a case. On John's side, it felt stilted and formal simply because it was an invitation rather than the unstated way of the world. The charged atmosphere didn't affect Sherlock in the slightest; he stood posed in the doorway, as ridiculously dramatic as ever, willing to wait long enough for John to dog at his heels but certainly no longer.

"Right, yes," John said. "I'll just get my coat."

Greg was waiting for them at the crime scene, an upscale hotel room far enough out of John's means to seem exotic. Sherlock paced around the room for three minutes, muttering to himself and putting Greg's new forensics officer on edge, before pronouncing the death "boring."

"Sherlock, the man hasn't got a mark on him and the concierge says he was visited by three different men in the span of an hour last night," Greg said.

"It was an assisted suicide," Sherlock said, and sniffed. "Unusual for a man of his age, but hardly _original_. Run a toxicology report and ask the brother for an alibi."

Together, John and Greg watched him stride out the door; John sighed and tucked his hands in his pockets, closing one fist around his wallet and the other around his keys. Sherlock had his phone, probably. He hadn't carried his a sidearm in ages.

"You look knackered," Greg said. "Sherlock keeping you up?"

"Long day at work," John answered.

"That I can understand. See if you can get anything out of him, will you? He might think it's obvious this poor bloke killed himself, but it isn't so plain to the rest of us."

"I'll see what I can do," John promised, and then hurried after Sherlock, before he was left to take his own cab.

This, at least, was familiar: streets and faces blurring past, the musty residue of a hundred different people that lingered in the upholstery, and Sherlock's mind whirring away beside him. After three blocks, Sherlock broke into his thoughts with an accuracy that was still uncanny.

"You aren't tired," Sherlock said, "you're angry."

John sucked in a breath. Inside his coat pockets, his hands balled into fists.

"But angry at what, I wonder? Or at whom?"

"What's that book doing in our flat?" John said.

"Which book?" Sherlock's pale eyes were revoltingly alien in the half-light.

"Which book—that book, _the_ book. You know which book."

"That book helped clear my reputation," Sherlock said, sounding amused or—something. "He published under his own name. Vanity goeth before the fall. He was a competent mathematician, I'm given to understand, although his more esoteric work is currently out of my range of understanding. No matter; it won't be for long."

"Why would, when, never mind. Ugh," John said, and squeezed his eyes shut. "Put it away, would you? If you're going to have it around, keep it somewhere I can't see it."

"If that's what you want," Sherlock said.

John wanted a lot of things, none of them fit for polite company. Topping the list was a strong wish to apply his foot to Sherlock's head.

"It's what I want," he said, and found that he did feel tired after all.

-

They hadn't talked about it. Oh, sure, Sherlock explained what had really happened, and why he'd pretended to be dead, and how he'd manufactured a return in time to catch the last of Moriarty's hired thugs. John nodded and read between the lines; he was, after all, a student of his master. Sherlock's hair had its first streaks of grey among the raven, his eyes were bruised enough that John had wondered if he'd been using again, his normally immaculate suit had been replaced with a working man's layered shirts, and his quicksilver gestures were now sluggish and deliberate.

After that, the Stradivarius reappeared by the window and the skull took up residence on the mantle, a number of well-maintained molds moved into the refrigerator, and Sherlock in his bathrobe took to contorting himself across the coach as if he'd never left. As Sherlock filled up the flat, John pulled in on himself. There was less air in the room when Sherlock Holmes was present, and John wouldn't change that for anything.

Mycroft kidnapped him for tea Monday next, as John was leaving his shift at the clinic. One of his army of assistants was waiting in the back, a woman John recognized as not-Elisabeth. She had a better memory than not-Anthea and more tolerance than not-Sylvester. John heaved a sigh and folded himself into the seat without a word; it was useless to complain.

John didn't like slick men, and he didn't trust them. Moriarty was slick, and Mycroft was slick; Sherlock was well-dressed and had manipulation down to a fine art, but he was too awkward—too much of a dick, as John had said more than once—to be truly slick. At one time he had almost trusted Mycroft, attributing Sherlock's snarling rancor as merely the resentment of a younger sibling, but after Mycroft sold Sherlock's life story for queen and country, John's trust had taken a short drop from a tall building.

"Hello, Doctor Watson," Mycroft said.

"Mycroft. Been a while. I suppose you've heard the news."

"The death and resurrection of Sherlock Holmes?" Mycroft folded the paper he'd been reading down so John could see the headline; it was exactly that, in lurid letters large enough to cover half the front page. "Yes, well, Sherlock did inherit a theatrical streak from Mummy's side of the family. Please," he added, and nodded at the vacant seat in front of the fireplace.

For the first time, it occurred to John that Mycroft—Mycroft, who was as close a figure to God himself as John was ever likely to meet—had been taken in by Sherlock's farce.

"You didn't know, did you," he said.

"I suspected," Mycroft corrected, and then made rare concession by repeating himself. "Doctor Watson, please. Have a seat."

"I'll stand, thanks."

"As you wish."

"Sometimes I could just strangle the whole lot of you," John continued. "All you Holmeses, I hope to god there aren't more of you running around the country—"

"I invited you here to inquire after my brother's health," Mycroft said, his tone observably stiff. His hands were laced together neatly atop the paper, but he wasn't quite meeting John's eyes.

"Yeah. Yeah, all right," John said, and sat down.

-

Sherlock was draped across his chair when John got home, limbs sticking out in every direction. John knew not to get too close, or he might trip and be speared in the kidney by one of those bony elbows. Death by flatmate's elbow, not a glamorous way to go.

"And how was brother dear?" Sherlock drawled lazily.

"The usual. Worried about you," John said, hanging up his scarf.

Sherlock made a noise in the back of his throat and proceeded to ignore John as John shed his coat and went to rummage in the kitchen for something edible. Frustrated to find nothing but the molds, he wandered back to the window. There was a book resting face-down on the sill, but John recognized it from the spine.

"I had a patient today," John said.

"Yes. I know," Sherlock said, and hummed again in the back of his throat.

"A little boy, eight years old. He had rubeola and bruises all up and down his throat. He told me that his father—that his dad hit him when he made too much noise. I don't know how his parents thought I wouldn't notice."

"Perhaps they wanted to be rid of him. What was the point of this sentimental little fairy tale again?"

"It isn't a fairytale, Sherlock, it's a child."

Sherlock finally seemed to be getting it through his thick skull that John was in a mood. "John," he said, in the particular, unbearable tone that meant John had captured his full attention. "Would you like me to make tea?"

"You're rubbish at tea," John said. "I'll make it."

"I'm not rubbish at tea—"

"You forget and let it steep too long." Unwillingly, the corners of John's mouth tugged upward. He collected three discarded teacups on his way back to the electric kettle.

"What would induce a man like Travers to take his own life?" Sherlock said, out of nowhere.

John sighed. "Christ, we're morbid," he said to the teapot.

-

John's first startled words had been, _You're not dead._

 _No,_ Sherlock had answered, sounding very like his brother.

-

"Christ, we're morbid," John said to the teapot.

"No history of depression. It was pre-meditated, probably planned weeks or months in advance. He had to convince his brother to help him—why? To make sure he wouldn't change his mind? Surely he would know that his brother might be implicated."

"This is about the man from last week, right?"

"Gerald Travers, 34, stock broker. The brother confessed, but he won't tell Lestrade why good old Gerry had the urge to off himself." Sherlock steepled his fingers and frowned over them at the wall; he had nice hands, did Sherlock. John hoped he'd kept the nicotine patches to a minimum.

"He liked model boats and his wife, perhaps not in that order. His boss, an insecure little toad, felt threatened by him, but not enough to block the progress of Gerry's career. Blackmail? His little sister served time for mail fraud, but her brother has no obviously unsavory connections."

"Oh, I don't know, Sherlock," John said. "Why would a man to kill himself?"

Sherlock looked at him distractedly. "Excuse me? You know I hate it when you mutter."

"I _said_ , what _do_ you think would make a man kill himself."

"Ah. This is about Moriarty's book."

John thought very hard about throwing the teapot at Sherlock's head. He thought about the cool weight of it in his hand, thought about the delicate, sure arc it would make through the air, thought about the pleasingly astonished expression Sherlock would make after a china projectile collided with his face.

"Don't be childish, throwing the teapot at me will hardly improve the situation."

"Shut up, Sherlock, just—"

"You want to know why I have his notes? I want to understand his passions. 'The proper study of mankind is man.'"

"You said that he was a spider, not a man—"

Sherlock flung himself out of his chair and paced to the window. "He was an odious little spider of a man, but there is one question about him I cannot answer, one mystery I cannot solve, and that. Is. You."

"Me?" John said. He was rapidly derailing from furious to confused. It was an unsettling sensation.

"Oh yes, you. He overlooked Molly, that was his downfall, but you—you're obvious. You are so absolutely blatant, and he didn't single you out, he didn't attempt to threaten your family or kidnap you or—did he think a handful of libelous articles would make you waiver in your faith?" Sherlock's hands tried to knot in his too-short hair. "Did he believe that public opinion was so much more important to me than your—"

"My what?"

"That's the problem, isn't it," Sherlock said, and cast an unreadable look over his shoulder. "Plain, ordinary, unsinkable John Watson. I owe you an apology."

"You—what?" John thought he should probably switch the kettle off before it boiled over, but his feet seemed to be tethered to the floor.

"My suicide," Sherlock said. "I made you an accomplice and then led you to believe in the lie of my demise for three years. I expect that's why you've been so angry."

"No, Sherlock, you complete idiot, I'm angry that you made me _watch_."

Sherlock was trying to hide a faintly puzzled expression. "You've seen plenty of people die."

John had never reacted to stress in ordinary ways, which probably explained why this made him burst into laughter. "Look," he finally said, once he'd managed to get himself under control, "if you're going to apologize, apologize for that and let's be done with it. I'm tired of avoiding you, somebody's got to remind you to eat."

"I'm sorry, John," Sherlock said dutifully.

"Good, thanks."

"Now pack your a bag, we're going to Sheffield."

"We're going _where_?"

"Sheffield!" Sherlock hollered, halfway to his bedroom and already in the midst of tearing off his robe. "The Travers case is proving more interesting than I anticipated. The game is on, John!"

"God for Harry," John said, and went to turn off the kettle.


End file.
